BDO challenges the competition in Norwegian market

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​27 June 2011

BDO Norway has reached an agreement with the former Praxity member firm in Norway, Inter Revisjon, leading to a merger between the two. After the merger, BDO will be a significant challenger to the largest auditing and advisory firms in the Norwegian market. However, BDO has no ambition to become similar to its large competitors, according to Managing Partner Trond-Morten Lindberg. He wants to offer services the Scandinavian way.

“Our edge is our strong local presence all across Norway. We are market leaders within the middle market, and now we are increasing our efforts to win the largest companies within this sector”, says Lindberg. Inter Revisjon contributes approximately 300 partners and staff to BDO Norway, and the merged firm will total more than 900 employees. Revenues will be in excess of € 125 million. We will continue to build strong local presence and give our clients a service level that our large competitors will not be able to match.

“BDO and Inter Revisjon complement each other in several areas. Most importantly, both firms have a corporate culture characterised by being available, solutions-oriented and having a non-bureaucratic approach. Our common values are what I normally refer to as the Scandinavian way, and we experience an increasing demand for this approach in the Norwegian market”, he adds.

Post-merger, BDO will have a geographically strong market presence in all the strategically important cities in Norway. The integration process will start immediately. The main emphasis in this process is not cost cutting and rationalisation, but rather how the new larger firm can continue to capture market share and utilise the opportunities that arise from a new regulatory environment.

New legislation in Norway, harmonised with the EU, has led to a removal of mandatory audit for small firms. Additional news is that one of the strategic changes made by BDO to meet this new environment is to expand the range of services offered and earlier this year, BDO acquired one of the leading providers of Integrity Services in Norway, G-Partner.

As of 1 June, G-Partner, Norway’s best-reputed Integrity Services player, became part of BDO. From the same date, Integrity services becomes a fully-fledged service line within the firm’s advisory services, headed up by G-Partner founder Erling Grimstad.

As part of the transaction, G-Partner brings to BDO a track record and current engagement portfolio comprising large international corporations, a large number of small and mid-sized companies and prominent parts of the public sector. G-Partner also has a number of national and international NGOs in their portfolio.

Says Trond-Morten Lindberg, “Through our purchase of G-Partner, BDO has expanded our range of services significantly, and with a quality level that is top of the market. We are also looking to grow within tax and advisory services as well as traditional accounting. We now have the market position and the financial backbone to succeed with our plans in Norway”.

Jeremy Newman, CEO of BDO, congratulates the Norwegian firm on these two important strategic developments. “These actions to substantiate BDO Norway’s presence in the local market are absolutely in line with the strategic growth plans of BDO internationally. Together with our strength within medium sized enterprises, BDO has a growing reputation for serving larger international corporates, with more and more of our firms winning clients with a multinational focus. The firm’s renewed focus on integrity services similarly reflects a growing trend in this area throughout our network”.

Note to editors

Service provision within the international BDO network of independent member firms (‘the BDO network’) is coordinated by Brussels Worldwide Services BVBA, a limited liability company incorporated in Belgium with its statutory seat in Brussels.

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The combined fee income of all the BDO Member Firms, including the members of their exclusive alliances, was $5.28 billion in 2010. The global network provides advisory services in 119 countries, with almost 47,000 people working out of 1,082 offices worldwide.